Poison Blood Relapse Records Neither Jenks Miller nor Neill Jameson are known for playing black metal straight. Miller’s Horseback, a fervent garden of lightning, has been the aural expression of his many musical passions, using Americana and black metal as part of a base for excursions into gnarly pyschedelic drone, doom, and blasted boogie. With […]
Patrick Wall
Bio: Patrick Wall lives in Winston-Salem. Find himon Twitter: @weekendsofsound.
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Reese McHenry Is a “Bad Girl” With Spider Bags at Her Side
Reese McHenry first approached Spider Bags’ Dan McGee about making music together more than half a decade ago. McHenry, then, was the driving force behind garage-country outfit The Dirty Little Heaters, and she and McGee only casually knew each other. So when McHenry told McGee that she wanted to make a great record before she […]
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The Hotelier and Modern Baseball Are Helping Emo Grow Up
The Hotelier Cat’s Cradle Back Room, Carrboro Saturday, July 2, 8 p.m., $12–$14 Modern BaseballCat’s Cradle, Carrboro Thursday, June 30, 7:30 p.m., $19–$23 Emothat “male-dominated, compositionally complicated, often pained offshoot of American punk rock,” according to NPRhas roared back into critical and commercial power. The once-grassroots scene is now a full-fledged trend, boasting its own […]
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A Measure of Soul: Lake Street Dive in Raleigh
LAKE STREET DIVE FRIDAY, JUNE 10 NORTH CAROLINA MUSEUM OF ART RALEIGH8 P.M., SOLD OUT What is soul? Does it parallel Justice Stewart’s definition of pornography in Jacobellis v. Ohioyou just know it when you see or, in this case, hear it? Sharon Jones has soul, as does Lee Fields. But what about The Alabama […]
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On Pile, A Giant Dog’s Success Stems from a Great Duo
A GIANT DOG TUESDAY, MAY 31 LOCAL 506, CHAPEL HILL 9 p.m., $8 The annals of rock ‘n’ roll history are replete with great core duosLennon and McCartney, Page and Plant, Daltrey and Townshend, Mercury and May, Jones and Strummer. In the riotous Austin power-punk quintet A Giant Dog, singer Sabrina Ellis is the Jagger […]
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Wanna Fight HB 2 and Actually Protect Kids? Download a Great Sumner James Remix of Some Army
Talk about timing: about a month ago, as the rural space-rock band Some Army was preparing at last to release its excellent One Stone and Too Many Birds, the band received a gift from pal James Phillips, the Bombadil member who moonlights under electropop moniker Sumner James. It was a remix of “Infinite Mirror,” the […]
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Record Review: Durham’s Maple Stave Keeps Counting with V
Maple Stave V Phratry Records Maple Stave has forever been defined by precision. More so than the unorthodox instrumentation of Andy Hull and Chris Williams, who play aluminum-body baritone electric guitars, and drummer Evan Rowe, the trio’s propulsive, pugnacious math rock is marked by method, a geodesic sense of melody, and tension ratcheted through restraint. […]
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An Interview With Pop. 1280, the Brooklyn Industrial Punks With the Grim Outlook
Pop. 1280 Slim’s, Raleigh Monday, Feb. 22, 9 p.m., $5 Paradise, the third record from Pop. 1280, doesn’t celebrate the idea of utopia as much as it examines the concept’s implausibility. The Brooklyn industrial punks venture far beyond the conventional realms of those terms, splicing squalid synthesizers and jackboot drum machines onto the same sort […]
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Hot takes: Tom Maxwell discusses the Squirrel Nut Zippers’ surprising hit record
As Tom Maxwell walks around the French Quarter on a warm, late-fall night, the sounds of New Orleans swirl around him. Jazz spills off street corners, and calliope music wafts from steamboats on the Mississippi. Maxwell, once one of the primary songwriters for Chapel Hill’s Squirrel Nut Zippers, moved to New Orleans a few months […]
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Listen to Mac McCaughan’s new album-length remix of Non-Believers, called Staring At Your Hologram
Back in May, Mac McCaughan released Non-Believers, his first record under his own name. Dominated by cold synthesizers and crisp drum machines, it’s a semi-autobiographical album that’s pretty far removed from Superchunk’s sugar-rush indie rock as can be. Yesterday, McCaughan issued Staring At Your Hologram, in which the Merge co-head honcho revises and deconstructs Non-Believers […]